Hello everyone. My Exchange environment is quite dated (I'm running Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2003. We have only a single Exchange server with about 200 or so odd users on it.) so I'd like to consider upgrading to the latest version sometime soon. When I mentioned this to my CFO, he asked me if offsite hosting might be a good option for us. I've always pictured Exchange hosting as a good solution for smaller companies with no IT Department of their own but the more I thought about it, the more it sounded like a decent idea. I don't spend much time right now maintaining our Exchange environment but not having to worry about that server and our anti-virus/anti-spam server would be good.

I am just wondering how many of you have considered or are using a hosted Exchange solution. When is it a good fit for your company?

6 Replies

My opinion -- Hosted makes more sense for smaller environments; there is a cost associated for hosted solutions, and they are not cheap. Lastly, as disk space grows for mailboxes, the more expensive it will become. The only time I have considered hosted isfor 10 or less users on a network.

Your more cost effective option is to keep it inhouse; 2010 has plenty of nice features that allows you to control spam with very little administration, calendar sharing, distribution lists; security etc..

Depending on the hosting provider, a large amount of users such as in your case really isn't cost effective. Hosted Exchange services are aimed at small companies and individuals who don't have the resources or funds to set up a full exchange environment, and would cost you more in the long run than if you were to upgrade your current exchange setup.

From an Administrative view, its usually web-based. You're using customized tools from the provider to set up and manage mailboxes, user groups, public folders, and the like. It tends to be time-consuming to add a large number of mailboxes.

You would also need to consider what to do with old email, based on either retention policy or if you would allow for everyone to merge their current exchange mail into the new hosted service. Often mailboxes are capped at X size, and you won't be able to change that with a hosted service.

From a financial point of view (I've dealt with CFO types for awhile) If you would rather upgrade, tell him that new infrastructure can be considered a capital expenditure and written off for several years, vs a hosted service that brings no asset value to the company in any way.

Finally, you'd be putting a primary business system into the hands of a vendor, and mostly out of your control. You would also hosting exchange offsite, which is usually done via IMAP or even POP3 for the mail portion.

Again, this all varies per host, but in your case, with 200 users, the migration effort and setup time would most likely be longer than if you were to upgrade directly or replace hardware. I hope this helps your decision making process.

You will find lots of other posts and links about this subject, including pro's and cons. First off - sit down and write up the pros and cons for your environment - what access do you need, (OWA, Mobile, remote sites?). Also, you will probably need new hardware for the 2010 (64bit only), do you have the hardware or will you need to make a purchase? Are you going to virtualize it? (recommended) do you have the skills to manage it?

We've got 40 people and about 100 mailboxes, actually only ~50 of those mailboxes being active. Since we've already got a server room with AC and UPSes we kept it hosted here.

I'm personally still cautious of "the cloud". There's really no good reason for most "cloud" providers to box you in the way they do. Sure, they'll generally bend over backwards to move your server onto theirs. Will they be so friendly if you decide to host your email elsewhere, or bring it in-house? Probably not.

It is about the same price to have services in-house, even with the extra costs of having me around. I don't spend much time at all on Exchange, so that's cheap. We're a non-profit, so the license is cheap.